This project will develop methods to treat and prevent blinding and visually disabling diseases due to inflammation. Studies will include the treatment and epidemiology of trachoma and other chlamydial eye diseases, the pathogenesis and treatment of ocular herpes simplex infections and other viral and allergic eye diseases. To develop insight into the causes of visual loss from trachoma, clinical microbiological and epidemiological data from village populations in North Africa will be utilized to develop and refine a descriptive model which will provide a cost benefit analysis of control procedures. Laboratory studies will compare methods for demonstrating the causative agent of trachoma, the usefulness of serology, and the antibiotic sensitivity of newly isolated strains of trachoma agent. These studies are aimed at developing techniques for trachoma control which will be based on paramedical personnel and simple laboratory procedures. Ocular infection based on paramedical personnel and simple laboratory procedures. Ocular infection with Chlamydia in San Francisco will be studied as a model of the pathogenesis of acute inflammation due to trachoma. This evaluation of methods for the prevention and treatment of visual disability from trachoma is intended to serve as a model system which could be applied to analyzing health care delivery problems in other blinding eye diseases.